


I Knew You Once (in another life)

by Godtiss



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-26
Updated: 2012-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-31 18:18:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/347025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Godtiss/pseuds/Godtiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>John dreams of falling, and on better days he dreams of flight. Of wings and time suspended and the way his name would’ve sounded spoken with joyous triumph.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an anonymous prompt on Tumblr.

John Watson doesn’t dream of desert sands anymore. He’s not plagued by gunshots and the screams of dying men, of the world stained red with blood and an agonizing pain in his shoulder.

Instead, for a while, he dreams of abandoned pools and dark moors, until even that is replaced by visions of hospital roofs and figures clad in dark coats that catch in the breeze. 

He dreams of falling, and on better days he dreams of flight. Of wings and time suspended and the way his name would’ve sounded spoken with joyous triumph. 

On worse days, he wakes whimpering, distant echoes of an impact he can’t remember rattling him to the core.

On those nights he doesn’t try to fall back asleep.

* * *

Devon is beautiful this time of year.

John picks his way up the small country lane from South Brent, savoring the crisp autumn air with each inhale. The sun has begun its descent towards the horizon, painting the sky with vibrant pinks and oranges and John smiles faintly, turning to the woman who walks beside him with her hand clasped gently in his.

He claimed to have brought Mary to the countryside on an impulse. A week in a rented cottage, nights spent out in the small village and mornings spent in bed together, content. And the weight of the small ring box in his pocket.

In reality, he’d been planning the trip for nearly a year and a half, ever since Mary had moved into 221B.

Her hand is small and warm in his, fingers slotting together perfectly and John is happy – genuinely happy – for the first time in three years. He still thinks about what his life might’ve been had he still been chasing criminals with the world’s only consulting detective. Sometimes he’ll consider where he might be had he not been shot, had Mike Stamford never introduced him to Sherlock Holmes.

But he doesn’t dwell on those thoughts anymore. He has a life now, with Mary. One that doesn’t involve crime scenes and murders and Chinese takeout and violin at all hours of the night.

He misses it, but it’s more a fleeting wistfulness rather than the crushing loss he’d felt for months after the detective’s death. Sherlock’s things have long-since disappeared from 221B.

He visits the grave as often as possible. And that’s that. 

Beside him, Mary brushes her shoulder against his and smiles, her dark blond hair catching the fading sunlight and glowing brilliantly. Her green eyes crinkle at the corners in that way he loves, and he stops there, in the middle of the road, and leans over to kiss her.

She laughs when he breaks away and tugs him along, back towards their cottage and John follows, a low chuckle bubbling forth because if he could have this moment forever, he’s pretty sure he’d be the happiest man alive.

Together they reach the small cottage, nestled in a grove of trees that partially obscures it from the road. Its brick exterior is illuminated by a single light hanging above the wooden door, flower beds lining the walkway. The sun has almost completely set, only the faintest violets painting the sky to the west. They tumble through the door with quiet giggles, toeing their shoes off and collapsing together in bed. They lie together atop the duvet, content to trade kisses and whispers for a time, until that isn’t enough and the desire to feel skin on skin finds them both unclothed and gasping.

They must’ve fallen asleep, because John blinks his eyes open in the darkness with a start and the clock beside the bed reads out early hours of the morning. The hair on the back of his neck stands on end, his ears ringing with the echo of his name he could not have heard. Outside, the wind whistles through the trees and a light rain patters against the window. Mary stirs beside him, rolling towards his warmth with a sigh.

“Nightmares?” she whispers, one hand reaching up to rest on John’s arm.

He kisses her forehead gently. “Go back to sleep.”

He slips from the bed, pulling on a pair of pajama pants and a t-shirt before groping his way through the darkness of the house. He makes it as far as the kitchen before there’s a faint knock on the door that cannot be mistaken for wind.

John freezes. 

He listens as the wind shakes the windows in their frames and the rain taps against the roof. His own heartbeat sounds loud in his ears as he stands motionless, eyes wide in the darkness.

The sound doesn’t repeat itself, and for a moment John is left wondering if he heard it at all. And then paranoia has him reaching for a knife (his gun is back in London, packed away at the top of his closet along with the skull.) He edges towards the door, footsteps muffled by rugs and the sound of the storm outside.

He tugs the door open an inch, peers out into the darkness beyond. He sees nothing, hears nothing aside from the poor weather, but then the night shifts just as he’s preparing to shut the door. The movement is hardly noticeable, nothing but the edges of the darkness blurring for a moment, but John is stepping out into the wind and rain, knife clattering to the ground forgotten as he reaches out to catch the crumpling figure.

The weight in his arms feels disproportional as he carries the man into the house. His clothes are drenched and dripping, and yet John could be carrying a child had he not known better. That alone sets warning bells ringing through his mind as he deposits the man on the couch, feeling his way through the darkness of the room until he finds the light switch.

A warm golden glow replaces the darkness and John turns, intending to find blankets and his phone, and a medical kit if needed. 

Instead, he’s rooted to the spot as he takes in the impossible, blood-stained face of a man he’d buried three years before.


	2. Chapter 2

He must still be dreaming.

It’s the only possible explanation as he stands looking into the slack face of Sherlock Holmes, who should have been dead and buried and gone and certainly not lying on John’s sofa, dripping wet and _alive_. John doesn’t know whether to laugh at the absurdity of the situation or fall to his knees in relief, or calmly climb back into bed with Mary because it seems the only _logical_ thing to do at this point. Nothing else makes any sense.

He is numb, his body frozen and he realizes he’s holding his breath when his lungs ache for air. He inhales sharply, casting his gaze about the room for anything that would give the dream away, would prove that he couldn’t possibly be awake and Sherlock couldn’t be alive. Except everything seems real and solid and John finds himself desperately wishing for it all to be true.

He relearns how to walk, covering the few short strides between the wall and the sofa, kneeling down beside the still form of the detective and peering past the blood and the dirt and the rainwater that swirls everything together, to see the prominent cheekbones, the cupid’s bow of his lips, the curly black hair – cut shorter than he remembers, but unmistakable.

John reaches out. He’s half expecting to meet no resistance, for his hand to pass through the illusion and shatter it, leaving him kneeling beside an empty couch in a rented cottage with the taste of bile in the back of his throat. But his fingers brush against coarse fabric, he’s aware of the solid warmth of Sherlock’s shoulder beneath his palm, and John can feel himself shaking apart there on the floor because it’s real and Sherlock’s alive and suddenly the world isn’t so off balance anymore.

He tries to speak, to call the man’s name, to open those eyes so to be sure that they’re the same pale blue he remembers them to be. But his breath catches in his throat, coming out a hoarse, disbelieving whisper even as his fingers curl around the shoulder, shake gently.

He receives no response. Sherlock’s eyes remain closed, motionless behind translucent lids. But it’s okay for now, because he’s here and somehow he managed to find his way back.

He is thinner than John remembers. He is older and, in a way, he is frailer. He looks breakable - looks nearly as bad as he did the last time John saw him, lying motionless on the pavement outside of St. Bart’s. His hair is still matted with blood, streaks marring his pale face. But he is breathing softly, the ghost of his breath brushing across the back of John’s hand when he moves to wipe at the worst of the blood, and for now alive is good enough.

John moves briefly into the kitchen, collecting a rag and a bowl of warm water, and begins the too-familiar task of cleaning the blood away. Even after three years of absence, the muscle memory returns and it is second nature, the methodic wet, wring, wipe, and repeat easing its way back into John’s mental processes like it hadn’t left at all. And maybe it hadn’t.

The damage he finds is superficial at best – a cut to the temple that should heal fine even without stitches, a bruise just below his right eye, a split lip. Still, John doesn’t trust that to be the only damage, and Sherlock is shivering with the combined wet and cold that the storm outside has brought, so there’s nothing more for it. John cuts away the remnants of his tattered shirt, revealing a masterpiece of black and blue that centers around the lower ribs and stomach.

The doctor in John takes over completely, not giving the friend in him a chance to worry about where the injuries may have come from. There would be time later. Hours, days, years even because John was not about to let Sherlock die again. Not now. Perhaps not ever. 

He goes to work doing the best he can to wrap the ribs that are in danger of being cracked or broken. His supply of proper bandages is low, but he makes due with what he has. He’s not sure how smart it would be to take a dead man to the hospital. He will if he has to, but it remains a last resort.

Sherlock is unresponsive while John works. He hopes it’s simply from exhaustion rather than malnourishment and him succumbing to his injuries, though it’s likely a combination of all three. He gently maneuvers the detective into a sitting position, moving up to sit beside him on the sofa as Sherlock’s head lolls forward to rest on John’s shoulder, his breath tickling the back of John’s neck and he tries to ignore it in favor of finishing wrapping the man’s midsection.

He stops when he catches sight of Sherlock’s back, sucks in a sharp breath and curses softly.

There is a blackness spread across his shoulder blades, inky and dark and glistening like oil except it doesn’t come away when John runs a careful finger lightly over the skin, feeling Sherlock’s body tense against his. There is no texture to it, no feeling at all except for a strange heat that feels warmer even than Sherlock’s feverish forehead against his shoulder. He frowns – he thinks he knows what it means, will never say it aloud - and retrieves the cloth and bowl from the table beside the sofa, ignoring how both are already stained red. He moves to gently scrub at the black, jerks his hand away again as Sherlock stiffens, a hoarse sob escaping from his lips as soon as the fabric touches his skin. And suddenly his face is buried in John’s neck, hands grasping weakly at the fabric of John’s shirt, breath coming quick and labored.

John finds his voice then, concern trumping all other emotion he may have felt at the detective’s return.

“You’re okay,” he’s quick to murmur, lips pressed against damp curls that smell of blood. “Sherlock, you’re okay. It’s me. It’s John.”

He whispers reassurances into the other’s ear until the tension begins to ease from Sherlock’s lean frame, his hands going slack as he leans heavily into the offered shoulder. The one ruined with scar tissue.

“John,” the word is nothing more than a broken sound torn from his throat, and Sherlock pulls back enough to where the glittering slits of his eyes are visible from beneath the black curls plastered to his forehead. John’s entire being comes to a screeching halt at the sight of the emotions painted so vividly on Sherlock’s face, swirling within the hollow depths of his glassy gaze. 

_What happened to you_ , John wants to ask, but he’s afraid he doesn’t want to know the answer so he swallows the words for another time, when Sherlock isn’t looking at him like he’s holding the world, broken in his hands. Instead he does what he can, pulling the man forward again until Sherlock’s face is buried in the crook of John’s neck, breath shuddering and John wraps his arms around the lithe body, careful not to brush against the blackened skin.

“You’re okay,” John repeats, voice soft, and he’s not sure which of them he’s trying to reassure anymore. “You’re okay.”

Eventually Sherlock’s breathing evens out, a steady ghost whispering across John’s neck, his body completely slack within the loose embrace. Neither of them move – Sherlock exhausted and John sure that the detective had slipped back into unconsciousness until he speaks, voice hoarse with disuse and so quiet that John nearly doesn’t hear it over the sound of wind and rain outside.

“I shouldn’t be here.”

He inhales as deeply as his injuries will allow, as though trying to memorize John’s smell for when he moves back, body shuddering and eyes tired.

John huffs a breathy laugh because the statement is so _wrong_. “You should be dead,” he says, and then instantly, “No, I didn’t mean-“

“I know what you meant,”

His eyes flit uneasily towards the door, then back to John’s face. His gaze is heavy; John can feel it like a physical weight in the air around them. Sherlock lists gently to the side before straightening again, and he looks so _beaten_ that John can’t help it, reaches out and steadies the other with a hand on his shoulder.

He knows he should feel anger. Anger at Sherlock for leaving him, for not telling him, for coming back. He should feel relief that Sherlock’s alive, that he came back at all. 

But he doesn’t. There’s nothing simmering just below his skin, itchy and uncomfortable and threatening to tear his mouth with harsh words. There’s nothing sweeping through him, making him feel lightheaded and weak at the knees.

There is concern. Sherlock’s middle is a painful collage of navy and violet and sickly yellow. The cut on his temple is slowly trickling blood down the side of his face. His back is black, and John knows what it means – will not allow himself to consider it when he’d only just gotten Sherlock back.

And there is fear. Fear that Sherlock will leave him again, Fear that it’s not real – a hallucination, a cruel trick. Fear because he sees the same emotion mirrored in Sherlock’s own gaze and John’s still trapped, fumbling through the dark.

“What happened?” he asks, voice a quiet murmur, eyes searching. 

Sherlock gives the twisted approximation of a grimace. He shakes his head, dark hair glistening and matted with blood. 

“There’s too much,” he says.

John’s expression darkens. “Why did you come back then?”

Sherlock must be unpracticed in the careful art of reading the emotions of an army doctor. He shifts his gaze, eyes half-lidded. “Surely it can’t be that difficult to deduce.”

John feels something then – not the uncomfortable itch beneath his skin, but rather an inferno that has found a parched forest and rejoices, leaping up into his throat and burning behind his eyes. His jaw clenches, he hears his teeth grind together in his skull and he allows himself to become awash in the feeling even while the rational part of his mind insists that it will do no good.

“No, Sherlock. You don’t get to come back from the dead like this. I watched you jump off the roof of St. Bart’s, I saw your blood on the sidewalk, I stood by when they wheeled your lifeless body back inside. I heard Molly pronounce you dea-“

He stops, eyes going comically wide in the semi-darkness. He seethes. “She knew.”

Sherlock does nothing to confirm or deny. He sits, watching John silently.

“God, she knew all along and I’d trusted her and you had her lie to me. Who else? Mycroft? Lestrade? Mrs. Hudson?” he barks a laugh. “You have some talented actors at your disposal, Sherlock Holmes.”

That strikes a nerve in the detective, who flinches harshly from John’s words, biting back a yelp when his back presses into the sofa but John’s too angry to care.

“Why _did_ you come back?” he repeats, his tone cruel and he knows he will regret it later but he can’t stop the flow of words. “Why didn’t you just stay dead?”

“John, I-“ Sherlock starts, stops. His hands pluck at empty air, but his expression betrays him – he had expected this reaction, but had no way to prepare for it. He’s taking the abuse, eyes downcast as he lets John rant.

“Where were you, Sherlock?”

“Where I had to be, but not where I wanted to be.”

“Sentiment doesn’t suit you. Where were you?”

Sherlock’s eyes flash briefly, but he traps the emotion before it can escape him. “I was hunting down Moriarty’s web. Name a city and I’ve been there – Prague, Berlin, Moscow, Paris, New York, Sydney. Sebastian Moran had to be taken out before I was allowed to come home.”

“Why? Why couldn’t you have told me this? I would’ve helped you hunt him down.”

“There were snipers. You were a target. Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson were targets. Had I not died, you would have.”

“But you’ve come back. Moran is dead?”

The anger begins to seep out, slowly. John knows it’s pointless – concern creeps back in, because if Sherlock’s expression is anything to go by he doesn’t want to know the answer to his question.

“No,” Sherlock growls. “Mycroft insisted I come here – there’s nothing more I can do to help. Moran is in Italy for the time being, being tracked.”

“Since when have you listened to your brother?” John scoffs, but his face falls at the look Sherlock casts his way. It is regret and desolation and exhaustion, and John doesn’t’ like it at all.

“You’re a medical man, surely you know what the twin black marks on my back mean. Most ten-year-olds would be able to tell you.”

John shakes his head. “No. You didn’t come back because-“

He stops, running a hand through his short hair and Sherlock looks on sadly.

"I – I would understand if you said no. If you wanted me to go – leave you and Mary alone. It’s not the return I was anticipating, but John,” his gaze is pleading. “ _Please_.”

John shakes his head furiously. Sherlock trembles. His hair is still matted with blood, his chest is bruised, but all John can see is the faint traces of darkness creeping over the detective’s shoulders, curling around his sides.

It’s nearly done spreading.

Sherlock’s wings will begin to grow in soon.

And the dogs will come growling at the door for him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I apologize for the delay between chapters, and for the shortness of this one.  
> Unbeta'd as of now. Please excuse any mistakes.

The shadow hovering in the kitchen doorway makes itself known with a quiet cough.

Sherlock flinches harshly, body recoiling and eyes clenched shut. John turns, smiles wanly at Mary.

“John?” her voice is small, green eyes flickering back and forth between Sherlock’s curled frame and John sat beside him on the sofa. She hugs herself tightly, arms wrapped around her stomach, pale dressing gown hanging from her shoulders.

“It’s fine,” John reassures. “He’s - he’s an old friend of mine.”

She edges into the room, bare feet lightly sliding against the carpet, tensed as if prepared to run. Her eyes move between the two of them, lips pursed in a small frown and nose crinkled in distaste. The room is thick with the smell of Sherlock’s blood and the rainwater that drips from his clothes.

“John,” she moves to stand beside him, the back of the sofa providing a barrier between herself and the dark-haired stranger. “John, his back.”

“I know.”

The windows rattle, buffeted by the storm outside. Sherlock turns his face into the soft cushions of the sofa, a low sound escaping his throat.

“Is he…?”

“He’ll be fine,” John says, plastering an easy smile to his lips that does nothing for the worry behind his eyes. “Go back to bed, love.”

She looks about to protest, but nods and turns, leaning down to press her lips to his temple before disappearing back into the bedroom. John is silent for a moment; Sherlock doesn’t stir.

John has never had firsthand experience with an angel. He’s seen them on the telly, of course, at award shows as they trail after the rich and famous, in the news as they hover behind politicians and the powerful. He’s seen them in the history books he had in school, dating back to medieval times. Being a doctor, he’s seen them in his med books, in instructional videos, in diagrams that dissect their wings and try to puzzle out their unpredictable, random appearances.

Back in Afghanistan, he’d always heard stories of the infamous angel who had grown its wings two years prior, at the base John had been stationed at.

John has never had contact with an actual angel before. He never thought he would, for how rare and – he shudders to think now, with Sherlock shivering so close – how prized they are. Angels belong to the rich and powerful. Not to invalidated army doctors.

He doesn’t want to think about what will happen to Sherlock. Auctioned? Sold to the highest bidder after undergoing the process that would wipe that amazing mind clean? 

Before, he hadn’t put any thought into the treatment of angels. You go to the hospital to have your bone set if you break your arm. You go to a Care Center to have everything _you_ erased if you happen to grow wings. Sure, he’d heard of resistance groups that had risen up in the past – activists for ‘angel rights’.

He never paid them any mind. Didn’t care enough.

Now, presented with Sherlock’s blackening back and the inevitable truth that his friend is an angel, John wishes he _had_ cared enough.

He’s never been at such a loss. He knows Sherlock won’t be able to stay, knows that it’s only a matter of time before the existence of another angel is discovered and Sherlock is spirited away. He’s torn – there is anger at the detective for coming back, for showing John that he was alive yet being weeks, perhaps days away from a fate Sherlock would unquestionably deem worse than death. And yet, the man sought John out – to make amends or simply seek the confirmation and comfort of friendship, John doesn’t know. Either way, he can’t turn Sherlock away any more than he can turn away himself.

“Can I get you anything for the pain?” he asks, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Dark curls bounce lightly as Sherlock shakes his head. “Won’t work.”

He turns, fever-bright eyes glittering up at John. “I can leave, if you want.”

“Don’t.”

The detective nods, gradually curls onto his side, one arm cradling his ribs. His eyes slip shut, lips parting to let his raspy breath escape his lungs in short exhales. The tension slowly eases from his limbs, and for a moment John believes him asleep until glassy eyes open again and find him in the gloom.

“My brother is bringing the papers.”

“Mycroft?”

A look of quiet exasperation finds itself onto Sherlock’s face, and for a moment he looks so much like the same man that John had seen fall from a hospital rooftop three years before that it hurts, a physical ache in John’s chest. 

“He sent me ahead – make amends, be sure you would agree.”

“Agree to what?” 

He has an idea of where this is going, isn’t sure what to think or feel or say.

“Agree to sign the papers.”

“What papers?”

“Ownership papers, John, keep up. I’d have stayed dead otherwise, had I not been sure I'd be legally able to stay.”

He shouldn’t. It’s neither the time nor the place. He can’t help it. “And if you hadn't been sure? If I’d someday turned on the telly to see you on stage next to some Hollywood actor at the Oscars?”

“Then you’d understand why I’d died.”

John shakes his head. “I can’t – Sherlock, do you even realize what you’re asking me to do? I – you wouldn’t even be you, you’d be some empty husk and I couldn’t-“

“John.”

He stops, refuses to meet Sherlock’s gaze. Takes a shaking breath. “I couldn’t do it.”

“I’m not asking you to. I’d stay _me_. I wouldn’t have come back if I wasn’t sure.”

Sherlock reaches out, long fingers curling around John’s wrist. Not pulling, not restraining, not painful. Just holding on, like John’s the only thing he has left.

John takes a shuddering breath and slowly nods. It says enough.

Mycroft will be by in the morning with the papers.


End file.
